Here is the positive text of the Constitution, and you must affix its meaning.

You cannot evade it, you cannot forget it, without abandonment of duty.

You must consider it not merely in vision or aspiration, but practically, as legislators, seeking a precise definition, to the end that the constitutional “guaranty” may be performed.

The character of the Government founded by our fathers is also involved in it.

In affixing the proper meaning to the text, and determining what is a “republican form of government,” you act as a court in the last resort, from which there is no appeal.

You may raise the name of Republic to majestic heights of justice and truth, or you may let it drag low down in the depths of wrong and falsehood.

No stronger or more comprehensive words could be employed, whether we regard the object, the party guarantying, or the party guarantied.

The express object is “a republican form of government.” This is plain.

The party guarantying is not merely the Executive or some specified branch of the National Government, but “the United States,” or, in other words, the Nation.

The Republic, which is the impersonation of all, guaranties “a republican form of government”; and every branch of the National Government must sustain the guaranty, including especially Congress, where is the collected will of the people.

The guaranty is not merely for the advantage of individual States, but for the common defence and the general welfare.

It is a guaranty to each in the interest of all, and therefore a guaranty to all.

And such is the solidarity of States in the Union, that the good of all is involved in the good of each.

As guarantor, the Republic, according to a familiar principle, is to act on default of the party guarantied; and then the duty is fixed in all its amplitude.

By these words the Nation is not only empowered, but commanded, to perform the great guaranty.

Mark, if you please, that it is not the meaning of this term according to Plato and Cicero, not even according to examples of history, nor according to definitions of monarchical writers or lexicographers,--but what is “a republican form…

Any interpretation rendering them insignificant must be discarded as irrational and valueless, if not dishonest.

They cannot be treated as a phrase only, nor a dead letter, nor an empty figure-head.

Nor can they be treated as profession and nothing more, so that the Constitution shall merely seem to be republican, reversing the old injunction, “To be rather than to seem,”--Esse quam videri.

Thus interpreted, they become at once a support of Human Rights and a balance-wheel to our whole political system.

I put aside all illustration derived from the speculations of ancient philosophers, because, on careful examination, it appears that the term “Republic,” as used by them, was so absolutely different from any idea among us as to exclude…

While the ancient nomenclature cannot be cited in determining the definition of a Republic, we may be encouraged by it in demanding that all government, whatever name it bears, shall be designed to establish justice and secure the general…

Thus, Plato, who commenced these interesting speculations, likens government to a just man, delighting in justice always, however treated by others; and the philosopher insists that every man is a government to himself as every community…

And yet there are two principles which all these philosophers teach: the first is justice; and the second is the duty of seeking the general welfare.

But a government thus composed cannot be recognized in this debate as “of a republican form.